Another view of Greg Adcock’s appointment

blog If you were reading Delimiter and Delimiter 2.0 yesterday, you may have seen that we took a fairly strong view on the departure of NBN Co chief operating officer Ralph Steffens and the appointment of Telstra’s NBN lead executive Greg Adcock in his place. We pointed out that it appeared there had been no formal executive search process to replace Steffens, that it appeared he had less fibre network rollout experience than Steffens, and also that Adcock had had contact with Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull before the election.

“Construction industry watchers said the NBN Co’s new chief operating officer, former Telstra director Greg Adcock, has the skills to help get the troubled national broadband network back on track.”

As a commentator, I’m not personally happy with the expedited fashion in which Adcock appears to have been appointed, and I stand by my comments on Delimiter 2.0 that the senior executive hiring process at NBN Co appears to have been politicised. However, I acknowledge that Adcock’s appointment has its fans. If the executive can get the NBN back on track, Delimiter will be the first media outlet to praise his work. Getting this work done, after all, should be the overriding goal of everyone involved in this process.

1 COMMENT

The logic of the following does not hold up when you are talking about hiring a Telstra executive

“Another industry source with an intimate understanding of the NBN said Mr Adcock’s appointment would help repair the relationship between NBN Co and the construction industry.”

“The problem was that NBN Co had a Telstra-like arrogance without any of its competence,” the source said. “NBN Co just didn’t get it right at any level so there was no justification for having the arrogance.

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